Biblical scholar

The Older Testament is a radically new approach  to many problems of both Old and New Testaments. It takes as its basis the theology of the Book of Enoch, lost to western Christendom for many centuries, but here recognized as providing the most consistent set of clues to the nature of Israel’s pre-exilic religion. Reformers and editors of the second temple period sought to remove from the biblical texts all traces of the older ways, which now survive only in the apparently bizarre themes and imagery of certain Pseudepigrapha.

Margaret Barker traces some of the ways in which the Deuteronomic standpoint came to dominate future readings of the Hebrew Bible as well as  scholarly conceptions of Israel’s religious development.  Her reconstruction of the pre-Deuteronomic religion throws a startling light on much of the imagery of the New Testament and shows how closely the earlier Christian expectations were based upon the ancient royal cult in Jerusalem.  This book represents and important and original contribution to our understanding of Judaism and early Christianity.

Professor John Barton, New Blackfriars.

First published in 1987 by SPCK, Republished June 2005 by Sheffield Phoenix Press. New ISBN: 190504819X